On September 17, 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law AB 685 in response to the Covid-19 Pandemic. This newly enacted law required employers to provide written notice to employees of a potential workplace exposure of Covid-19 on/or before the effective date of January 1, 2021. Employers are now required to engage in a notice protocol if (i) the employer is notified that an employee has contracted Covid-19, (ii) if an employee has been ordered to isolate related to Covid-19, (iii) if an employee has died from Covid-19 or if the worksite itself has been exposed to someone fitting the description of (i), (ii) or (iii) above. The law further states that the notice to employees must be written and given in a manner the employers normally use to communicated information to its employees, i.e., email. In response to the law, DoIT enlisted the assistance of our telephone service provider AT&T, who recommended InformaCast Fusion Software by Singlewire. The InformaCast software solution was implemented by Risk Management in December 2020 with great success. The software has been configured to notify impacted employees of any Covid-related issues within all divisions and departments via an email to their desktop computer and County issued mobile devices. When the software was purchased in 2020, the Purchasing Agent, on behalf of DoIT, entered into a one-year license agreement with Singlewire as we were unsure if this software was the best solution on a long-term basis. AT&T is the third-party reseller for the Singlewire Software InformaCast Fusion software licenses. The agreement with Singlewire continues until terminated by the County or Singlewire. As the provision of AB 685 does not expire until January 1, 2023 and the fact that we are extremely satisfied with this software solution, we are requesting a renewal of our license agreement for a three-year period and are receiving a 10% multi-year discount from the vendor. While we hope the pandemic crisis will be over by January 1, 2023, the use of this software will continue to be beneficial to the County as it can and will be used as an emergency notification system for many different circumstances, including, active shooter incidents, severe weather alerting and building lockdowns or evacuations. Because this software it so versatile, it can also be configured for use by individual departments to provide instant messaging to all employees via their desk phones, IP based speakers, digital signage and physical security systems.

If this is not approved, the County will not be in compliance with AB 685.